Cry-Baby

Ever; 2007

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Loosely translated, ungdomskulen is provincial Norwegian for junior high school, which in this case seems like an adolescent scrawl across a bathroom wall. It might be approximated in English as Junyer Hi Skool-- an adolescent scrawl across a bathroom wall. Sure enough, the songs on Ungdomskulen's debut album, Cry-Baby, detail such teenage concerns as masturbation, public erections, hard rock, and mythical creatures sketched in notebooks, but Ungdomskulen are neither brats like the Black Lips nor pretend-goths like Fall Out Boy. Instead, the trio are both the freaks and the geeks, deviants deciding their fates with a ten-sided die before cramming for that trig exam.

Cry-Baby is a busy album, cramming eight long songs with as many digressions, tangents, and asides as possible, transitions be damned. It can be a little jarring and occasionally repetitive, both of which are forgivable for the band's misfit relentlessness on "Modern Drummer" and stand-out "Spartacus", with its shouted chorus and spiraling trajectory. Occasionally, they jam aimlessly, as on "Ungdomskulen", but most of these songs-- even "Glory Hole" with four-minute clockwork cowbell breakdown-- are purposefully and thoughtfully constructed. Up close, opener "Ordinary Son" is a frantic dancepunk track similar to those by Klaxons or early Liars, with herky-jerky guitar riffs and a bouncily melodic bassline. Take a few steps back, though, and the entire ambitious arrangement becomes visible, reminiscent of Built to Spill's guitar epics. Drummer Øyvind Solheim rides his high-hat furiously between the notes, and singer Kristian Stockhaus, in his thick-frame glasses and scruffy beard, shows off his formidable metal falsetto on the chorus. The song reaches a fevered climax around 2:30, then starts to wind down. But that's a feint: Ungdomskulen re-attack with short exclamatory riffs, then regroup for a lengthy mid-song groove as Solheim tests out his cowbells and Stockhaus and bassist Frode Kvinge Flatland, hidden behind a cascade of dark hair, swordfight with their guitars. Shamelessly, they do the same fake-out ending later in the song, and on almost every song thereafter. It works every time.

And yet, for all their wankery, Ungdomskulen never departs from its power-trio line-up, meaning there are very few sounds on Cry-Baby that don't emanate either from drums, guitar, bass, and vox. Cry-Baby is just strings and skins, and by necessity, it's democratic, emphasizing each element equally while covering a lot of ground, from the pop melodies of "Feels Like Home" and "My Beautiful Blue Eyes" to the noisy crunch of, well, "Feels Like Home" and "My Beautiful Blue Eyes". These songs are all motion, mixing indie-rock lightning with heavy-metal thunder and revealing a belief in rock's spiritual powers: "I feel that your fills are real," Stockhaus tells a modern drummer on "Modern Drummer". "You fill up the void that we all have inside." On one level, their approach-- the musical equivalent of running "Serpentine!"-- seems to short-circuit any stab at seriousness, not that they're trying to be the Arcade Fire. But Ungdomskulen manage to rock sans irony, finding a certain freedom in adolescent arrest.